The quote that will be the starting point for this message is a very long one, and because of that, I’m not going to be reading it here all at once. The quote itself is from Lutheran pastor/writer Nadia Bolz-Weber, who I have spoken of here many times before as she is on the short list of my favorite writers.
The occasion for what she says here was the funeral service for fellow writer Rachel Held Evans, who was also her good friend. This is the benediction for that service, the blessing at the end, given by Bolz-Weber. Before I start, just for context, here’s a quick introduction for any of you who may not know who Rachel Held Evans was.
She was raised in a conservative evangelical faith. She was the “good Christian girl” who knew all the right answers to bible questions. As a young adult, she began to run into a disconnect between the “love” preached in her church and their willingness to shut certain people out of that love. She wrote several books about her doubts and questions and her struggle to reconcile her old faith with her new lived, more progressive reality. And she died much too young from a freakish infection.
I’m not going to say more about Evans, she’s easy to Google and I certainly recommend her books, but she is not the point of this message except as her loss provided the reason for Bolz-Weber’s benediction.
For the past several weeks I have been preaching from my “Things that Catch My Attention” series, working from random quotes from random sources. The point of this apparent randomness has always been to connect the things that concern us today with those in biblical times. Life at its most basic doesn’t really change all that much. Humans are humans and they had the same worries and joys 2000 years ago as we do today. What changes is largely found in cultural attitudes. I’ve been attempting to see where we disagree and where and when we do agree.
This piece of the quote comes at the very end of Bolz-Weber’s benediction:
- Jesus invites us into a story bigger than ourselves and our imaginations, yet we all get to tell that story with the scandalous particularity of this moment and this place. We are storytelling creatures because we are fashioned in the image of a storytelling God. May we never neglect that gift. May we never lose our love for telling the story.
The various quotes I’ve used this season have each been one piece – however small – of some person telling some part of the story as they know it, and for the most part it has been fairly easy to find someone in scripture who has at some time voiced the same thought. They told the story at their time and their place – in their context -- and we now tell it in ours -- our time, our place.
We try to tell the story that God first tells us – a story of God’s love for all that God created – the fact is that we are the story God tells. But not every interpretation of that story is equally valid. Sometimes the telling of God’s story of love for us has – over the centuries -- drifted off-center – drifted into something more like human opinion rather than what God actually says. And sometimes the story as it’s being told needs to be corrected: stories that say that rulers can kill at whim – NO, we don’t tell that story any more; stories that say that slavery is acceptable – also NO; stories that say that some people are more valued by God than others – just, NO.
To go back to Bolz-Weber’s long quote – this longer bit is from the middle of her original blessing -- these are some of the corrections we are working on these days – things you won’t find on every page in scripture, except, of course, that every single one is included in Jesus’ blanket command that we “love one another”:
- "Blessed are the agnostics. Blessed are they who doubt. Blessed are those who have nothing to offer. Blessed are the preschoolers who cut in line at communion. Blessed are the poor in spirit. You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you.
- Blessed are those whom no one else notices. The kids who sit alone at middle-school lunch tables. The laundry guys at the hospital. The sex workers and the night-shift street sweepers. The closeted. The teens who have to figure out ways to hide the new cuts on their arms. Blessed are the meek. You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you.
- Blessed are they who have loved enough to know what loss feels like. Blessed are the mothers of the miscarried. Blessed are they who can’t fall apart because they have to keep it together for everyone else. Blessed are those who “still aren’t over it yet.” Blessed are those who mourn. You are of heaven and Jesus blesses you.
These are the people who are so often left out of God’s story as it is told by too many people today. These are the stories that many of us are struggling to tell today instead of the stories of violence and misogyny and tribalism told in scripture – stories written at a time when weakness was scorned and the strong were admired. We, today, struggle to tell our new stories because the old hate-filled, violence-filled, exclusionary stories are still told by too many who claim to be speaking for God.
Jesus told us – and tells us still – a story of love. Love for neighbors, love for strangers, love for ourselves. Love for the outcasts and the unloved and the shunned. Love for those who live in the shadows, afraid to be noticed. And all this love is part of the story into which we are called – the story we are called to live.
We today are invited, in Bolz-Weber’s words, into a story bigger than ourselves and our imaginations. We find this story in the acts of Creation, where God’s love shines through so clearly in the beauty and creativeness found all around us, and in the stories of faith and charity scattered throughout scripture, and we find it especially in the words of Jesus – this is the story he lived here among us to tell. And sometimes we even find it in the words of those who followed him.
It’s a story bigger than we are. And we are invited to tell it -- again, in Bolz-Weber’s words -- with the scandalous particularity of this moment and this place. We are invited to tell our story.
So, who is it that is left out of the story as you’ve heard it? Who is it you believe God includes yet you rarely hear any kindness toward them expressed in scripture or in many of our churches? If we are indeed storytelling creatures because we are fashioned in the image of a storytelling God, then we should be about our work of filling in the gaps in the story we’ve been told.
We may, each of us alone, be one small voice, largely unheard on its own – but when enough of us speak up, speak out, our changes to the prevailing story will, in time, be heard.
What is the point of being blessed by God to be a storytelling people, if we never tell our stories? Do we even know what our story is?
I am grateful every day for the storytellers who have impacted my understanding – and continue to do so: Nadia Bolz-Weber, Rachel Held Evans, John Pavlovitz, Stephen Charleston, Frederick Buechner, Anne Lamott, Carrie Newcomer.....I could go on and on, because there are many more. These are among the people who are right now, today, changing the story where it needs to be changed. And when I speak out and add my voice to theirs – it’s still a small voice, but it’s in good company – and all our voices together are being heard.
So I’ll ask again – who are the people who are being left out of God’s story of love as it is being told in your church, in your community, in your family? And who will speak for them, if you do not?
We are storytelling creatures because we are fashioned in the image of a storytelling God. May we never neglect that gift.
Amen.
If you'd like to read the benediction in its entirety and in its proper order, you can go here (cut and paste): https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2019/06/08/gods-blessing-to-the-weak/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook&fbclid=IwAR3ZznEoa-HZZydPhsToDkzdnTqtjEkTJXLdWhs6zlG9imYCJOCiqWv_6HA
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